The Blog of Ian Pace, pianist, musicologist, political animal. A place for thoughts, reflections, links, both trivial and not so trivial. Main website is at http://www.ianpace.com . Contact e-mail ian@ianpace.com.

Was Leon Brittan A Paedophile ?

You’ll find fulsome obituaries elsewhere and perhaps even praise but I want to focus on the truth, or not, of the allegations that Leon Brittan was a paedophile.

Over the last two years there have been many rumours and news stories alleging that Leon Brittan was a paedophile, though you may not have realised as he has invariably been euphemistically alluded to as “a former senior Tory cabinet minister” or something similar. There had been some concern among journalists, and even this blogger, that the continued and ubiquitous use of this term might itself have become so synonymous with Leon Brittan that its use might itself have precipitated legal action if Lord Brittan decided to take that route.

The allegations are not new they go back to the early 1980s at least, as Bernhard Ingham, former press secretary to Margaret Thatcher, has…